«»~^^«»-" 


A  PROTEST      11 


AGAINST  '  V) 


^ 


P 

LINCOLN  WORSHIP    i 
AT  THE  SOUTH        i 


RICHMOND,  VA. 

W.  C.  HILL  PRINTING  CO. 

1915 


Infamy  dogs  the  heels  of  nations  as  of  men, 
Who  Esau-like  their  birth  right  for  mere  pottage  sells; 
Pulse  upon  a  shard  may  nourish  mettled  men, 
While  dainty  viands  served  on  platters  of  pure  gold 
May  poltroons  batten  and  leave  them  poltroons  still. 
Fast  thralls  of  mammom,  we  now  cringe  supine, 
All  whilst  the  bestial  god  our  holiest  shrine  invades, 
Lares  and  Penates  shrinking  from  his  touch  profane 
Topple  to  the  sordid  level  of  the  mart. 


Nol 


A   Protest  Against    Lincoln 
Worship  at  the  South 

NOT  THE  SOUTHERN  IDEAL 

Sherman,  His  Lieutenant,  Devastated  Nearly 

Twice  as  Much  Territory  at  the  South 

as  All  Belgium  Combined 

"In  a  blaze  of  burning  roof -trees,  under  clouds  of  smoke  and  flame, 
Sprang  a  new  word  into  being,  from  a  stern  and  dreaded  name; 
Gaunt  and  grim  and  like  a  specter,  rose  that  word  before  the  world, 
From  a  land  of  bloom  and  beauty  into  ruin  rudely  hurled, 
From  a  people  scourged  by  exile,  from  a  city  ostracized, 
Pallas— like  it  sprang  to  being  and  that  word  is  Shermanized." 

L.  VIRGINIA  FRENCH. 


What  thick  hides  and  short  memories  we  Southern 
folk  have,  and  how  inconsistent  we  are!  We  call 
.jwn  anathema  on  the  Kaiser's  head  for  the  de- 
vastation of  Belgium;  in  almost  the  same  breath  we 
raise  paeans  to  Lincoln;  who  was  responsible  for  the 
far  more  causeless  and  ruthless  devastation  of  the 
South  by  Sherman — Sherman,  who  waged  war  so 
atrocious  that  its  very  author  could  find  no  name  on 
earth  to  match,  but  had  to  go  down  below  to  get  it. 
Well  might  he  with  Milton's  Satan  say: 

"Where  I  am  is  hell." 

Satan  lit  it's  fires  in  his  own  breast;  Sherman,  in  the 
desolated  homes  of  war,  made  widows  and  orphans. 

If  Belgium  had  its  Louvain  and  Antwerp,  so  also  had 
the  South  it's  Columbia,  its  Atlanta,  its  Savannah, 
its  Charleston. 

Countless  Belgium  homes  have  been  burned.  But 
there  has  been  nothing  like  systematic,  utter  de- 
struction. The  Kaiser,  outnumbered,  hard  beset, 
the  very  existence  of  his  country  in  imminent  peril 
has  increased  his  slender  store  of  food  by  robbing 
Belgium,  electing  to  starve  foe  rather  than  friend. 
That  vengeance,  not  necessity,  prompted  the  black 
path  that  Sherman  cut  through  the  South,  the 
evidence  is  full  and  damning.  On  December  18, 
1864,  General  Halleck,  Chief  of  Staff  to  President 
Lincoln,   and  necessarily  in  close  touch  with  him, 

3 


writes  to  Sherman  as  follows:  "Should  you  capture 
Charleston,  I  hope  by  some  accident  the  place  will  be 
destroyed.  And  if  a  little  salt  can  be  sown  on  its  site, 
it  may  prevent  the  future  growth  of  nullification  and 
secession."  Sherman,  on  the  24th,  answers,  as  follows: 
"I  will  bear  in  mind  your  hint  as  to  Charleston,  and 
do  not  think  that  'Salt'  will  be  necessary.  When  I 
move  the  15th,  corps  will  be  on  the  right  of  the  right 
wing,  and  their  position  will  naturally  bring  them 
into  Charleston  first,  and  if  you  have  watched  the  ; 
history  of  that  corps,  you  will  have  remarked  that 
they  do  their  work  pretty  well.  The  truth  is,  the 
whole  army  is  burning  with  an  insatiable  desire  to 
wreak  vengeance  on  South  Carolina." 

One  of  Wheeler's  scouts,  observing  Sherman's* 
advance  reported  that  during  one  night,  and  from  one 
point,  he  counted  over  one  hundred  burning  homes. 
And  as  to  the  looting,  a  letter  written  by  a  Federal 
officer,  and  found  at  Camden,  S.  C,  after  the  army 
passed,  and  given  in  the  Southern  Woman's  Maga- 
zine, runs  as  follows:  "We  have  had  a  glorious  time 
in  this  State.  The  chivalry  have  been  stripped  of 
most  of  their  valuables.  Gold  watches,  silver 
pitchers,  cups,  spoons,  forks,  etc.,  are  as  common  in 
camp  as  blackberries.  Of  rings,  earrings,  and  breast 
pins,  I  have  a  quart.  I  am  not  joking — I  have  at 
least  a  quart  of  jewelry  for  you  and  the  girls,  and 
some  No.  1  diamond  pins  and  rings  among  them. 
Don't  show  this  letter  out  of  the  family. 

Sherman  long  denied  burning  Columbia.  When, 
after  the  overwhelming  evidence  that  he  did  burn 
it,  was  adduced,  he  unblushingly  admitted  that  he 
did  burn  it,  and  that  he  had  lied  on  Wade  Hampton 
with  the  purpose  of  rendering  him  unpopular,  and 
thereby  weakening  his  cause.  But  a  mere  lie  shows 
white  against  the  black  ground  of  Sherman's  char- 
acter. 

I  could  pile  up  a  mountain  of  facts  as  damning  as 
those  given.  But  what  boots  it  to  prove  what  too 
long  ago,  has  been  proven — that  not  since  Attila 
"The  Scourge  of  God"  cut  his  black  swath  across 
Europe  fifteen  hundred  years  ago,  has  Sherman's 
"March  to  the  Sea"  had  its  fellow. 

The  conversion  of  the  Shenandoah  region  into  a 
waste  so  complete,  that  in  Sheridan's  own  words,  a 
crow  flying  over  it  would  have  had  to  carry  his 
rations — a  destruction  not  only  of  every  vestige  of 
food,   of  all   animals   and  fowls,   but   also  of  every 

4 


implement  that  could  be  used  to  make  or  prepare 
more  food,  every  mill  stone,  wagon,  plow,  rake  and 
harrow,  down  to  the  flowers-hoes  of  the  women, 
may  have  been  a  military  necessity,  for  this  lovely 
valley  was,  in  some  measure,  the  granary  of  Lee's 
army. 

The  necessities  of  war  demanded  that  Sherman 
live  off  the  country  he  traversed.  Those  elastic 
necessities  may  have  been  stretched  to  demand  that 
he  destroy  even  the  pitiful  stint  of  food  that  the 
South  had  left — that  he  wrest  the  last  morsel  from  the 
mouth  of  mother  and  babe,  lest,  perchance,  some 
crumb  thereof  reach  and  nourish  the  men  at  the 
front.  But  what  necessity  of  war,  except  that  brand 
that  Sherman  fathered  and  sponsored,  demanded 
that  the  torch  follow  the  pillager,  that  every  home 
be  burned,  and  famishing  mother  and  babe  be  turned 
out  in  mid-winter  to  die  of  cold  and  exposure. 

The  whole  world  shudders  at  the  robbery  and 
partial  ruin  of  Belgium.  Sherman  devastated  an 
area  nearly  twice  as  great,  and  devastated  it  utterly, 
leaving  only  blackened  chimneys  and  starving  women 
and  children  in  his  wake.  That  his  hell  was  only 
some  sixty  miles  wide,  was  owing  to  no  lack  of  Satanic 
ferocity  on  his  part.  It  would  have  been  much  wider, 
had  not  Wheeler,  with  his  handful  of  horse,  hung 
close  to  Sherman's  flanks,  with  a  quick  halter  for 
every  marauder  he  caught  in  the  act.  Sherman's 
little  finger  was  heavier  than  the  whole  martial 
fist  of  the  Kaiser.  Belgium  was  a  battle  ground — the 
largest  and  fiercest  that  even  blood  soaked  old 
Mother  Earth  ever  saw.  But  it  took  five  million 
men  five  months  to  work  wreck  and  ruin.  Sherman 
'did  it  overnight  with  sixty  thousand.  The  Kaiser 
found  at  least  a  potential  sniper  in  every  window,  his 
every  step  was  a  battle.  Sherman  had  only  a  light 
screen  of  cavalry  to  brush  aside,  and  not  always 
even  that. 

That  there  was  less  starvation  in  Sherman's  path 
than  the  Kaiser's — though  many  a  high-born  South- 
ern lady  kept  life  in  her  children  for  the  time  with: 
the  waste  corn  slobbered  from  the  mouths  of  the 
Federal  cavalry  and  artillery  horses — was  because 
the  South  was  large  and  far  less  densely  populated 
than  Belgium,  and  that  the  victims  sought  shelter 
in  the  unravaged  regions  which  Wheeler  had  saved. 

Then  there  is  a  hideous  chapter  in  this  black  book 
that  never  has  and  never  will  be  written — so  hideous 


that  even  the  South  has  been  fain  to  draw  over  it  the 
curtain  of  oblivion.  I  mean  the  violence  that  South- 
ern women  suffered  at  the  nands  of  Sherman's  ruf- 
fians. Tt  is  a  well-known  fact,  and  by  none  better 
known  than  by  military  men  themselves,  that  men 
herded  in  camps,  removed  from  the  restraints  of  home, 
j-apidly  tend  to  relapse  towards  barbarism,  and  that 
only  the  iron  hand  of  discipline  can  hold  them  in 
check.  Relax  that  discipline  in  one  respect,  sanction 
the  perpetration  of  one  crime,  and  all  crimes,  es- 
pecially the  crime  against  woman,  follows  as  a  natural 
sequence. 

No  one  who  lived  in  or  near  Sherman's  path  in 
Georgia,  South  Carolina,  or  even  in  this  State,  after  1 
the  war  was  over  and  the  troops  marching  for  dis- 
bandment  in  Washington,  can  lack  knowledge  of 
cases  that  came  to  light,  despite  every  effort  of  the 
hapless  victims  themselves,  to  hide  them.  To 
recall  only  the  cases  which  abide  with  me  most 
vividly,  that  came  practically  under  my  own  observa- 
tion, or  that  I  had  first-hand  knowledge  of — the 
beautiful  girl  to  whose  rescue  came  one  of  Wheeler's 
troopers,  and  who,  seized  and  used  as  a  shield  by  the 
ruffian  who  had  abused  her,  in  her  agony  begged  the 
trooper  to  shoot  through  her  body  and  kill  him,  but 
by  a  dexterous  movement  the  brute  was  killed  over 
her  shoulder. 

The  cottage,  with  its  rose-covered  porch,  in  which 
lived  the  young  widow  and  her  three  daughters,  all 
noted  for  their  beauty  and  refinement,  at  whose 
door  a  band  of  Federal  troopers  drew  rein  at  dusk — 
the  screams  and  sobs  that  all  the  livelong  night  the 
neighbors  heard,  but  dare  not  stir — the  tomb-like 
aspect  of  the  cottage,  with  no  smoke  from  the  chim- 
neys, no  sign  of  life  for  days  and  days  afterwards — 
the  veil  of  oblivion  that  the  sorrowing  neighborhood 
drew  over  it  ever  afterwards.  The  very  first  offense 
of  a  negro  against  a  white  woman  that  I  ever  heard  of. 
was  committed  in  this  neighborhood  by  one  who  had 
been  under  Sherman's  tutelage.  What,  indeed,  was 
the  saturnalia  of  crime  against  Southern  women  for  a 
generation  afterwards,  but  the  aftermath,  the  legacy 
of  that  foulest  blot  on  American  history — Sherman's 
vaunted  "March  to  the  Sea." 

It  is  a  maxim  of  war,  as  it  is  of  common  sense,  that 
the  higher  the  rank,  the  greater  the  fame  or  blame 
for  any  given  act.  In  every  crime  that  sprang  from 
this  lack  of  discipline — and  no  one  can  question  that 

6 


practically  all  did  so  spring — the  men  higher  up,  who 
invited  the  crime  by  lowering  the  bars  of  discipline, 
were  worst  criminals  than  the  perpetrators  them- 
selves. Above  the  perpetrator  stood  the  commander 
of  the  army,  Sherman;  above  Sherman  stood  the 
commander-in-chief  of  all  the  Federal  armies,  Abra- 
ham Lincoln.  If  Lincoln  ever  discountenanced. 
Sherman  and  his  methods,  he  has  never  given  word 
to  it,  and  he  was  a  man  of  many  words. 

However,  I  hold  no  brief  for  the  Kaiser.  My 
sympathies  are  naturally  with  the  mother  country, 
England,  though  I  can  not  shut  my  eyes  to  the  fact 
that  the  Germans,  at  once  the  most  prolific  and  the 
most  efficient  and  enterprising  of  all  civilized  people, 
must  finally  prevail,  hardly  by  war,  but  more  likely 
by  peaceful  immigration,  and  that  Western  Europe 
and  both  Americas  must  in  the  long  run  be  German- 
ized. 

My  object  in  this  paper  is  to  protest  as  strongly  as 
I  know  how  against  this  Lincoln  cult;  this  Lincoln 
worship  if  you  will,  now  gaining  headway  at  the 
South.  That  Lincoln  was  an  able  man,  of  many 
amiable  qualities,  is  wholly  beside  the  point.  The 
colossal  public  crimes  of  history  were  committed  by 
men  altogether  amiable,  or  estimable,  or  both,  in 
private  life.  Julius  Caesar,  the  destroyer  of  ancient 
liberty,  was  the  most  genial  and  companionable  of 
men.  Charles  the  First,  who  but  for  the  headsman, 
might  have  destroyed  modern  liberty,  was  a  tender- 
hearted, lovable  gentleman  of  stainless  private  life 
as  was  Robes'pierre,  who  glutted  the  very  guillotine 
with  innocent  blood.  Who  could  out-cajole  Napoleon 
or  Louis  the  Fourteenth,  arch  enemies  of  mankind, 
or  as  to  that,  Satan,  himself.  Did  it  brighten  the  lot 
of  the  shell-torn  inmates  of  Southern  hospitals  to 
know  that  the  maker  of  medical  and  surgical  supplies, 
contraband  of  war,  was  a  man  of  infinite  jest?  Were 
the  skeletons  rotting  in  the  vermin-encrusted  burrows 
of  Andersonville,  or  freezing  in  the  icy  sheds  of  Point 
Lookout  and  Fort  Deleware,  helped  by  knowing  that 
the  breaker  of  the  cartel  could  not  abide  the  sight  of 
misery?  Did  it  lessen  the  sorrow  of  Southern  mothers, 
whose  roof-trees  ablaze,  fled  with  their  little  broods 
to  the  wintry  woods  and  swamps,  to  know  that  the 
hand  that  swayed  the  besom  of  hell,  always  rested 
tenderly  on  the  head  of  his  own  children?  Did  it 
minish  the  agony  of  Southern  maidens,  writhing  in  the 
clutches  of  Sherman's  licentious  soldiery,  to  remem- 

7 


ber  that  the  one  at  the  head  of  it  all  was  a  virtuous 
man. 

Lincoln,  the  public  man,  the  only  Lincoln  that  we 
knew,  was  the  creature  of  the  Republican  party — the 
party  born  of  anti-Southernism,  anti-Jeffersonism, 
the  innate  and  truceless  foe  of  individual,  local  liberty, 
as  opposed  to  centralism,  imperialism. 

Did  Lincoln  ever  rise  a  hair's  breadth  above  his 
party?  Is  there  a  single  instance  in  which  he  failed 
to  see  with  its  eyes,  act  with  its  spirit?  When,  during 
the  opening,  progress  or  close  of  the  war,  did  he 
display  that  greatness  of  mind  or  of  heart,  that 
magnanimity  that  should  wrest  homage  from  even  a 
vanguished  and  ruined  foe?  When  or  where  was  he 
other  than  the  incarnation  of  Republicanism. 

Shall  we  honor  him  for  the  dexterity,  not  to  say 
duplicity,  with  which  the  Peace  Commissioners,  the 
able  men  whom  the  South  sent  to  Washington  in 
March,  1861,  in  a  strenuous  endeavor  to  avert  war, 
were  kept  dangling,  while  in  violence  of  solemn 
promise,  the  secret  expedition  was  prepared  and 
despatched  to  reinforce  Sumter,  a  measure  so  close 
akin  to  perfidy,  that  it  alarmed  and  enraged  the 
South  and  precipitated  war. 

It  has  been  a  platitude  of  history  that  the  war  was 
inevitable.  Like  most  platitudes,  it  has  very  little 
thought  back  of  it.  In  exact  proportion  as  we  disen- 
tangle the  skein  of  past  diplomacy  and  past  politics, 
in  the  same  degree  do  we  discern  that  few  of  any  wars 
were  inevitable.  In  public,  no  less  than  in  private 
life,  the  soft  answer  turneth  away  wrath.  At  one 
touch  of  a  frank,  honest,  sympathetic  hand,  the 
most  sinister  political  kaleidoscopes  in  history  have 
instantly  assumed  benign  combinations. 

But  that  is  all,  by  the  way.  The  wisest  men  of  that 
day  did  not  think  war  inevitable.  Men  North  and 
South  were  working  hard  for  peace.  Lincoln's  words 
and  actions  made  only  for  war. 

|£  Shall  we  honor  him  for  his  emancipation  proclama- 
tion? The  blackest  crime  laid  at  the  door  of  George 
the  Third,  was  that  he  unleashed  a  handful  of  savages 
against  our  frontiers.  Lincoln,  as  far  as  in  him  lay, 
unleashed  four  million  savages  (which  the  North  held 
that  slavery  had  converted  the  negro  into)  in  our 
very  midst,  against  our  defenceless  women  and  chil- 
dren. To  the  good  feelings  existing  between  the 
races,  we  chiefly  owe  that  the  horrors  of  St.  Domingo, 

8 


multiplied  ten  thousand-fold,  were  not  repeated  at 
the  South. 

Shall  we  honor  him  for  the  flagrant  breach  of  the 
cartel,  and  the  resulting  hells — Point  Lookout,  Fort 
Delaware,  Johnson  Island,  Camp  Morton,  Camp 
Chase,  Rock  Island,  at  the  north  Andersonville,  Belle 
Isle,  Salisbury  at  the  south,  and  many  more  prisons 
in  each  republic? 

Shall  we  honor  him  for  out-Kaisering  the  Kaiser 
in  making  medical  and  surgical  supplies  contraband 
of  war,  this  adding  a  still  lower  depths  to  those  hells, 
as  to  the  whole  war,  on  the  Southern  side. 

Shall  we  honor  him  for  Sherman's  Gargantuan  orgy 
of  crime  in  Georgia  and  South  Carolin,  and  for  the 
vile  dregs  of  it  that  our  own  women  had  to  drain  long 
after  the  hostilities  ceased? 

Lincolns  tragic  taking  off  naturally  caused  a  great 
revulsion  of  feeling  in  his  favor  at  the  South.  This 
has  prompted  us  to  believe  that  had  he  lived,  the 
Republican  lion  would  have  transfigured  itself  into 
a  lamb  the  moment  that 

"That  the  war  drums  ceased  from  throbbing 
And  the  battle  flags  were  furled" 
In  Other  words,  that  mildness  and  benignancy  quite 
angelic,  would  have  marked  the  reconstruction 
period,  or  rather  there  would  have  been  no  reconstruc- 
tion period  at  all,  but  instead,  a  kind  of  family  re- 
union, with  Seward.  Ben  Wade  and  Thad  Stevens, 
et  id,  as  ecstatic  ushers. 

But  from  what  act  of  Lincoln's  do  we  find  justifica- 
tion for  this  belief,  or  rather  hope.  There  were  good 
words  I  know.  For,  statesman  as  he  was,  Lincoln 
was  first,  last  and  always  the  politician,  seeking  the 
»  public  will  before  the  public  weal.  Not  by  words,  but 
deeds,  must  a  man  be  judged.  It  is  true  that  when 
Richmond  fell,  he  authorized  the  calling  together  of 
the  Virginia  legislature.  But  it  was  avowedly  because 
.he  believed  that  it  would  recall  the  Virginia  troops 
from  Lee's  retreating  army,  and  he  wished  to  give 
opportunity  to  do  so.  The  moment  that  Lee  sur- 
rendered, he  withdrew  the  permit,  and  ordered  the 
arrest  of  any  members  who  disobeyed  the  order  to 
quit  Richmond  promptly. 

It  is  far  more  likely  than  otherwise,  that  Lincoln's 
death  lightened  the  heel  that  sought  to  grind  us  in 
the  mire.  The  incarnation  of  Republicanism  in 
war,  there  is  not  a  shadow  of  reason  for  believing 
that   in  peace,  he  could   have  thwarted  the   politi- 

9 


cians  of  their  prey,  though  he  would  no  doubt 
have  deprecated  their  violence.  The  Republican 
politicians  were  bent  upon  the  utter  humiliation 
and  degradition  of  the  South;  upon  forcing  on  her 
civil  rights,  miscegenation,  mongrelism.  Their 
animus  is  shown  by  the  clash  with  Andy  Johnson, 
the  fierce  fight  against  even  the  stint  of  justice,  that 
a  renegade  would  fain  have  accorded  the  land  of  his 
birth.  So  fraught  was  their  attitude  to  the  South 
with  malice  prepense,  that  they  in  a  measure  over- 
reached themselves,  and  brought  about  a  partial 
reaction  of  feeling  among  the  Northern  people  at 
large.  Then  the  scrimmage  with  Johnson  distracted 
their  attention.  He  got  many  a  blow  that  would 
otherwise  have  fallen  on  our  defenceless  head.  Under 
Lincoln,  their  methods  would  almost  surely  have 
been  less  violent,  but  probably  far  more  systematic 
and  insidious.  Davis  might  not  have  been  im- 
prisoned, or  Wirz,  the  commandant  of  Andersonville 
prison,  executed.  But  in  all  likelihood,  a  more 
furtive  deadly  way  would  have  been  found  to  work 
our  undoing. 

The  man  to  whom  is  really  due  the  gratitude  of 
the  South  is  Grant.  Had  he  not  scotched  the  plan 
of  the  Republicans  to  punish  the  Southern  military 
leaders,  by  threatening  to  throw  up  his  commission 
if  Lee  was  arrested,  there  is  no  telling,  the  gates  of 
vengeance  over  ajar,  when  they  would  ever  been 
closed. 

Turning  from  Lincoln  the  Republican,  to  Lincoln 
the  man.  Is  the  wily,  not  to  say  tricky,  politician, 
the  reveller  in  "smutty"  jokes  the  Southern  ideal. 
Lack  we  of  our  own  kith  and  kin,  of  our  own  house- 
hold of  faith,  great  men  who  were  also  great  gentle- 1 
men.  Are  we  so  poor  in  heroes  that  we  must  needs ' 
pedestal  the  man  who  led  his  sections  somewhat 
bunglingly,  it  is  true,  but  without  ruth  or  remorse 
in  the  onslaught  that  virtually  destroyed  ours. 

Again,  is  there  anything  in  the  achievement  of* 
Lincoln  so  dazzling  that  it  should  blind  us  to  every- 
thing else?  Is  there  glory  for  the  strong  in  over- 
coming the  weak,  the  many  the  few.  Would  we 
ever  have  heard  of  Goliath,  Xerxes,  Darius  and  all 
their  like,  had  they  won?  Such  immortality  that 
they  were  is  reflected  from  the  foes  they  faced,  weaker 
but  of  better  mettle. 


10 


Not  An  attack  on  Lincoln.    Simply  a  Protest  Against  the 
Grovelling  Lincoln  Worship  at  the  South. 

"What  is  history  but  a  lie  agreed  upon" — Napoleon. 

Verily,  if  the  light  that  is  in  us  be  darkness,  how  great 
is  that  darkness!  Among  the  responses  to  my  paper 
on  -Lincoln,  which  one  editor  alone,  ventured  to 
print,  was  one  from  a  leading  lawyer,  who,  deprecat- 
ing the  "attack,"  as  he  called  it,  expressed  a  serious 
doubt,  whether,  but  for  Lincoln's  influence,  I  would 
now  and  here  be  permitted  to  write  as  freely  as  I  do. 
Than  this,  I  could  have  no  better  proof  of  the  need 
of  true  light  on  this  subject;  the  light  that  is  in  us, 
being  but  darkness.  Here  was  an  exceptionally 
well-read  gentleman,  a  man  who  does  his  own  think- 
ing and  that  of  a  goodly  number  of  his  fellows  be- 
sides, in  substance,  believing  that  we  needed  just 
what  we  got  in  the  sixties,  and  ought  to  be  shouting 
glad  that  we  got  it.  Shades  of  the  Fathers!  We,  of 
the  purest  strain  of  the  stock  that  gave  freedom  to 
the  world;  we,  from  whose  very  loins  sprang  the 
architect,  the  builder  and  the  defender  of  American 
liberty,  we,  so  poor  in  State  craft,  so  bankrupt  in 
morality,  that  an  alien  must  needs  come  with  three 
million  at  his  back,  and  with  fire,  sword,  and  rapine, 
x  save  us  from  ourselves!  Yet  such  is  the  logical,  the 
inescapable  deductions  from  the  premises  we  accept. 

The  North,  flinging  to  us  the  dross  of  physical 
prowess,  has  arrogated  to  herself  the  gold  of  moral 
rectitude  and  political  infallibility.  We  have  been 
taught,  and  are  tamely  accepting  the  dictum,  that 
the  South,  when  she  lost  hold  on  the  motherly  apron 
strings,  when  she  foolishly  ventured  from  under  the 
,  aegis  of  Northern  protection,  that  she  relapsed 
swiftly  towards  despotism  and  anarchy,  and  that 
Appomattox  alone  saved  us  from  political  disintegra- 
tion. 

Is  this  true?  Do  we  alone  deserve  the  odium  of 
*being  the  one  branch  of  the  race  too  weak  to  frame 
civil  institution  that  could  stand  the  crucible  of  war? 
The  Romans,  the  sanest  and  most  practical  political 
people  the  world  has  ever  seen,  always  when  the  ship 
of  State  was  in  peril,  put  a  dictator  at  the  helm. 

"Inter  Arma  Legem  Silent." 

In  the  clash  of  arms,  law  was  silent,  suspended. 
Private  right,  private  wrong,  had  to  wait  until  the 
foe  was  vanquished  and  Rome  safe. 

Rome,   when  beset  the  hardest,  never  faced  the 

11 


disadvantages,  and  was  rarely  ever  in  the  extremity 
that  the  Confederacy  stood  from  beginning  to  end. 
Never  in  any  land  was  there  direr  need  that  a  hand, 
strong,  arbitral,  untrammelled  by  peace,  built  law 
and  usage,  garnering  every  man,  every  resource  should 
strike  as  one  at  the  Giant  Foe. 

Yet  was  there  a  dictatorship  at  the  South,  or  any 
semblence  of  one?  Did  war  submerge  law?  It  is  a 
maxim  of  our  race  that  free  speech,  free  press,  free 
land.  Tyranny  ever  chains  first  the  tongue,  strikes 
her  first  blow  at  the  palladium  of  liberty — free 
utterance. 

Right  here  in  North  Carolina,  the  Confederate 
government  had  its  fullest  swing.  The  State  lay 
nearer  to  Richmond — and  distance,  owing  to  crude 
transportation  facilities,  was  a  far  more  formidable 
thing. then  than  now — than  any  other  State  as  largely 
free  from  invasion.  It  affords  a  fair  instance  of  the 
contact  of  the  Confederate  government  with  the 
civil  life  of  the  people. 

Now,  living  evidence  is  still  abundant  that  no  man 
was  molested  for  opinion's  sake  or  for  word  spoken. 
That  the  press  remained  unmuzzled,  the  files  of  the 
Raleigh  Standard,  which  to  the  very  end  preached 
stark  treason  to  the  Confederacy,  stands  in  ever- 
lasting evidence. 

Governor  Vance,  of  North  Carolina,  and  Governor 
Brown,  of  Georgia,  though  patriotic  men,  seeing  fit, 
even  in  extremity,  to  place  State  rights  and  other 
considerations  before  Confederate  success,  hampered 
the  Confederate  executive  to  a  degree  never  before 
or  since  tolerated  under  such  circumstances.  It  is 
true  that  the  impressment  and  conscription  measures 
were  grievous  burdens,  especially  here  in  such  close ... 
reach,  but  they  were  laws  of  the  Congress  and  not 
the  fiat  of  the  executive.  In  short,  much  of  the 
defensive  power  of  the  South  was  lost  by  the  failure 
of  President  Davis  to  weild  the  full  measure  of  power^ 
that  would  readily  have  been  acquiesced  in  by  the 
people  at  large.  Never,  not  even  in  the  greatest 
crises,  did  Jefferson  Davis  exercise  one-tenth  the 
dominance  over  the  Confederate  Congress  that  Wood- 
row  Wilson  now  does  over  the  Federal.  Davis'  de- 
crease of  popularity  towards  the  end,  came  from  no 
abuse  of  power  on  his  part,  but  mainly  from  the 
stigma  which  the  world  attaches  to  failure.  That  is, 
except  in  case  of  the  soldier.  Around  him  war  flings 
a  saving  halo. 

12 


Let  us  glance  at  the  other  side  of  the  picture.  At 
the  status  of  the  civilian  of  the  North.  The  Federal 
government,  infinitely  superior  in  resources,  had  not 
the  same  urgent  need  for  unity.  Yet  we  find  its 
actions  immeasurably  more  arbitrary  than  those  of 
the  Confederate  Government.  Not  under  the  old 
regime  in  France  were  Lettres  de  Cachet  as  plentiful  or 
more  potent;  It  was  a  well-known  boast  of  Stanton, 
Secretary  of  War,  that  he  could  touch  a  bell  on  his 
table  and  order  the  instant  arrest  of  any  man  in  the 
Union.  Fort  McHenry,  at  Baltimore,  Fort  Lafayette, 
at  New  York,  Fort  Warren,  in  Boston  Harbor,  and 
the  old  Capitol  Prison,  at  Washington,  became 
veritable  bastiles,  crammed  with  political  prisoners, 
men  immured  for  what  they  had  said  or  for  what  it 
was  suspected  they  might  say  or  do.  In  the  Old 
Capitol  Prison  at  least  executions  were  frequent. 

Never  imposed  Fate  a  heavier  burden  on  any 
people  than  on  the  South,  when  she  was  made  the 
ladder  on  which  the  benighted  African  must  climb  to 
civilization  and  Christianity.  Not  the  approbium, 
but  the  profound  sympathy  of  the  whole  world,  and 
especially  of  the  Negro  himself,  is  our  just  due.  For 
never,  since  time  began,  has  a  race  climbed  from 
darkness  to  light,  so  swiftly  and  at  so  small  a  price  to 
itself — at  such  fearful  cost  to  the  instrument  of 
its  elevation. 

As  is  well  known,  slavery  was  no  Southern  indigene; 
no  plant  that  grew  here  only.  It  was  only  the  in- 
heritance of  the  ages.  Sanctioned  by  immemorial 
and  universal  usage,  and  even  by  Holy  Writ  itself, 
it  was  indeed,  the  very  oldest  of  all  human  institu- 
tions. Founded  originally,  in  part  at  least,  upon 
morality,  upon  the  pity  which  spared  instead  of 
slaying  the  captive,  it  thus  became  the  bedrock  of 
ail  civilization.  But  slavery  in  this  land,  and  at  that 
date,  was  a  thing  strangely  out  of  place  and  out  of 
time.  So  much  so,  indeed,  that  one  wonders  as  to 
'  Fate's  motive  in  the  misplacement.  Did  a  spirit 
of  impish  irony  impel  her,  or  was  she  actuated  by 
deeper  motives,  when  she  dropped  this  Old  World 
estray,  this  foundling  in  the  cradle  of  liberty,  the 
New  World,  the  motive  that  as  we 

"Broadened  with  the  act  of  Freedom" 

We  should  also 
"Grow  strong  beneath  the  weight  of  duty." 
Slavery  would  surely  have  gone,  even  had  Lincoln 
never  been  born.     The  drift  of  the  world  had  set 

13 


against  it  deep  and  resistless.  Harking  back  two 
thousand  years  to  Epictetus,  it  had  come  to  see  that 
not  to  him  who  getteth,  but  to  whom  who  doeth  a 
wrong,  cometh  the  chief  harm.  Emancipation  was 
inevitable,  and  to  hold  that  the  Southern  people, 
the  purest  blooded  branch  of  the  sane,  and  virile 
Anglo-Saxon  race,  the  race  which  gave  liberty  to 
the  world,  and  which  in  all  lands  and  under  all  con- 
ditions, had  stood  for  justice  and  fair  play,  as  it  come 
to  see  it,  for  us  to  hold  that  this,  our  branch,  would 
have  been  so  degenerate,  so  recreant  to  the  genuis 
and  spirit  of  the  stock,  so  inferior  to  its  forbears, 
or  even  to  the  "lesser  Breeds"  to  the  South  of  us, 
that  .did  put  it  by,  that  it  lacked  the  manhood  to 
free  itself  from  the  incubus  of  slavery,  is  a  worse 
slander  than  even  our  foes  would  dare  put  upon  us. 

It  is  argued,  and  by  our  own  writers  as  well  as 
others,  that  the  slave-holding  class  dominated  the 
South,  and  that  self-interest,  cupidity,  would  always 
have  impelled  this  class  to  block  emancipation. 
I  would  reply  that  slavery  in  divers  forms  was  long 
an  institution  with  our  race.  But  that  the  race  in  its 
progress  put  it  by,  despite  the  strenuous  opposition 
of  the  slave-holding  class,  as  it  must  have  done  in 
this  case.  The  whole  moral  trend  of  the  race  rendered 
any  other  course  impossible.  The  fact  that  medieval 
serf  was  white  and  strong,  and  the  modern  slave 
black  and  weak,  would  undoubtedly  have  made  the 
work  of  emancipation  harder,  but  the  race  is  morally 
stronger  now  than  then. 

There  is  one  fact  generally  overlooked,  which  would 
have  added  greatly  to  the  practicability  of  emancipa- 
tion. That  was  the  fact  that  the  slave-holding 
classes  at  the  South  were  in  a  minority  of  about  six  . 
to  one.  Every  reform,  social  or  political,  that  our 
race  has  achieved,  has  been  in  the  face  of  a  wealthy 
minority  far  stronger  than  that.  In  fact,  it  is  almost 
a  truism  of  our  politics  that  the  people,  as  opposed  , 
to  aristocracjr,  always  win  in  the  long  run.  No 
civilization  has  survived  in  which  the  rule  did  not 
hold.  The  chief  reason  that  the  dust  covers  so  many 
of  the  splendid  civilizations  of  the  past,  was  because 
the  great  mass  of  the  people  remained  inert  to  the 
end.  The  broadening  of  the  franchise  right  here  in 
North  Carolina  in  the  fifties,  whereby  the  aristocratic 
dominence  of  the  State  Senate  was  abolished,  is  a 
significant  proof  of  what  the  middle-class  manhood 
of  that  generation  was  capable  of. 

14 


One  thing  is  certain:  The  South  would  have 
avoided  the  irretrievable  error  of  the  North  in 
making  the  slave  a  citizen  first  and  a  man  afterwards. 
As  emancipation  would  have  been  gradual,  so  also 
would  have  been  the  elevation  of  the  freed  men.  As 
he  attained  the  full  stature  of  manhood  so  he  must 
perforce  have  been  invested  with  the  rights  and 
privilege  of  a  man,  colonization  being  impracticable 
at  that  late  period,  segregation  would  probably  have 
been  the  solution  of  the  race  problem.  Even  in  this 
sanctimonious  age,  we  exclude  the  Asiatic.  Where 
would  have  been  the  sin  in  settling  the  African  in  a 
prescribed  area  of  the  country,  and  excluding  him 
from  the  other  parts  of  it?  Compared  with  the 
Yellow  peril,  the  Black  peril  is  Olympus  to  a  wart. 

Some  degrees  of  wrong  and  injustice  there  might 
have  been.  Wrong  and  injustice  are  not  often  absent 
from  the  affairs  of  this  world.  But  who  is  bold 
enough  to  assert  that  the  measure  of  them  could  have 
equalled,  or  even  distantly  approached,  that  infini- 
tude of  injustice  and  of  wrong — that  orgy  of  political 
madness — reconstruction,  whose  blighting  effect 
was  to  distract  and  stunt,  perhaps  forever,  the 
development  of  the  negro,  and  to  sow,  as  far  as  the 
hand  of  malice  could  sow,  the  very  salt  of  annihila- 
tion over  the  civilization  and  life  of  the  South. 

As  is  well  known,  the  emancipation  movement  in 
its  earlier,  saner  stages  had  its  warmest  and  ablest 
supporters  at  the  South.  Washington,  Jefferson, 
Henry,  Madison,  and  the  foremost  men  of  that  time, 
sought  earnestly  for  some  practicable  method  of 
putting  an  end  to  slavery,  which  was  generally  re- 
garded as  a  curse,  and  especially  so  to  the  whites. 
»  But  for  the  perfectly  natural  reaction  caused  by  the 
rabid,  incendiary  methods  of .  the  abolitionists, 
which,  beginning  about  1830,  flowered  so  quickly  and 
hideously  in  the  Nat  Turner  butchery  of  white 
j women  and  children,  gradual  emancipation  would 
have  soon  been  under  way,  and  would  almost  surely 
have  ended  slavery  with  that  century.  I  would  not 
deny  that  the  development  of  cotton  growing  caused 
by  the  perfection  of  the  cotton  gin,  and  the  resulting 
enormous  increase  in  slave  values,  would  have  made 
emancipation  a  tremendous  problem.  But  sphinxes — 
political,  social,  industrial,  moral,  religious,  racial, 
had  lined  the  pathway  of  our  race  down  the  ages. 
All  had  been  answered,  and  we  believe,  answered 
right,  by  the  communities  which  had  most  at  stake. 

-        15 


To  our  branch  alone  was  denied  the  priceless  boom 
of  answering  for  themselves  the  most  momentous 
problem  of  them  all,  a  problem  that  involves  not 
only  our  prosperity  but  our  very  existence  and  which 
now  can  only  deepen  and  darken  with  the  passage  of 
the  centuries.  Were  our  immediate  forebears,  the 
men  whose  courage  and  heroism  in  war  placed  the 
Lost  Cause  in  fames'  eternal-  keeping,  whose  fortitude 
and  sagacity  triumphed  even  over  reconstruction, 
who  hurled  back  the  envenomed  dart,  negro  suffrage, 
upon  the  heads  that  sent  it  weaklings,  men  whose  des- 
tiny was  safer  in  the  hands  of  an  alien  and  hostile 
section  than  in  their  own.  Perish  thought  so  blas- 
phemous. 

How  few  of  us,  too,  have  ever  analyzed  the  famous 
emancipation  proclamation.  Have  ever  tried  to 
ascertain  the  proportion  of  politics,  diplomacy  and 
philanthrophy  couched  therein?  Have  ever  regarded 
its  true  purport  and  bearings?  Did  it  free,  or  seek  to 
free,  all  the  slaves  in  the  land?  Oh  no!  Only  a  part. 
What  part?  Those  in  the  hands  of  Lincoln's  enemies; 
those  within  the  Union  lines;  those  in  the  hands  of 
friends  were  not  affected  by  the  proclamation.  They 
remained  in  bondage  as  far  as  this  instrument  was 
concerned.  Lincoln  had  been  dead  nearly  a  year 
before  total  abolition  was  legally  brought  about. 
Outside  of  the  punitive  intent,  the  prime  motive  of 
the  proclamation  was  first  to  buttress  the  Republican 
party  against  the  rising  tide  of  Democracy.  Second, 
the  Union  arms  against  those  of  the  Confederacy. 
The  military  end  sought  was  to  weaken  his  enemies 
by  destroying  their  property.  Naturally,  he  struck 
at  their  chief  asset — their  slaves.  If  he  had  been  able 
thereby  to  destroy  any  or  all  of  other  kinds  of  their 
property,  he  would  have  done  so.  If  his  simple  ipse 
dixit  would  have  cut  the  throat  of  every  work  animal, 
milch  cow,  fired  every  roof  tree,  and  imperiled  the 
honor  of  every  woman  in  the  South,  there  is  no  reason* 
to  believe  that  he  would  have  withheld  its  utterance. 
For  it  was  his  word  that  sent  hundred  of  thousands 
through  the  South  to  do  these  very  things. 

If  we  must  accept  subjugation,  even  of  mind  and  of 
spirit;  if  we  must  view  the  whole  bloody  drama 
through  the  eyes  of  our  enemies;  if  we  must  believe 
that  the  blow  came  from  above  and  not  below;  that 
we  not  only  richly  deserved  but  sadly  needed  just 
what  we  got,  then  the  right  men  to  honor  are  the 
pioneer    abolitionists,    Garrison,    Wendell    Phillips, 

16 


Gerrith  Smith,  and  men  of  that  feather.  They  boldly 
stood  for  abolition,  when  to  so  stand  meant  hatred, 
contempt,  and  imminent  peril  of  life  and  limb.  These 
men  had  no  ulterior  motives.  They  breasted  the  tide 
of  fortune.  Lincoln  floated  upon  it.  If  honor,  we  must, 
the  sowers  of  the  wind  whose  fearful  whirlwind  we 
had  to  reap,  Let's  honor  these,  the  real  heroes,  of 
the  cataclysm.  True,  they  sent  John  Brown  pikes 
to  butcher  us  with,  but  they  were  perfectly  willing 
to  be  butchered  themselves  in  the  same  cause. 

No  one  would  deny  that  Lincoln  was  an  enemy  of 
slavery.  He  was  a  product  of  a  class  and  of  an  en- 
vironment that  drew  in  hatred  of  slavery,  and  of  slave 
holders  with  every  breath.  Moreover,  most  thinking 
people,  North  and  South,  were  enemies  of  slavery  in 
theory.  With  Lincoln  and  the  North — it  was  only  a 
theory.  With  the  South,  it  was  a  fact,  a  grim  fact 
which  foisted  upon  us  by  English  and  late  Northern 
greed,  time  had  now  riveted  upon  us.  The  growth 
was  cancerous.  But  would  you  go  to  your  butcher  to 
remove  even  a  cancer. 

Emancipation  at  the  time,  and  in  the  manner  in 
which  Lincoln  sought  to  enforce  it,  was  politico- 
military  measure,  and  nothing  else.  1862  was  election 
year.  Lincoln,  great  man  and  statesman  as  he 
undoubtedly  was,  was  also  politician  to  the  core. 
And  when  did  your  politician,  big  or  little,  fail  to 
trim  his  sails  to  the  wind?  To  save  the  party  and 
then  let  the  party  save  everything  else.  Federal 
arms  had  sustained  such  repeated  and  disastrous 
defeat  that  Northern  opinion  was  turning  to  the 
Democratic    party    which    favored    peace.      Defeat 

i  stared  Republicanism  in  the  face.  Something  must 
be  done  to  stem  the  tide.  The  emancipation  proclama- 
tion was  the  answer.  While  primarily  a  political 
move,  great  things  was  also  expected  of  it  in  a  military 

■t  way.  It  was  largely  believed  that  the  slaves  would 
rise  and  deal  with  Southern  women  in  a  way  that 
would  crumble  the  Southern  armies  almost  in  a  day, 
as  each  man  rushed  home  to  save  his  own. 

As  a  military  measure,  it  was  the  fiasco  of  the 
ages.  Not  a  slave  stirred  or  lifted  hand.  But  its 
political  effect  was  immense.  It  instantly  brought 
into  the  Republican  camp  every  cohort  of  abolition- 
ism, and  held  all  in  line  to  the  end,  through  those 
these  lines  bent  fearfully  under  Jackson's  blows  at 
Chancellorsville,    and    again,    when   soon   after   the 

17 


grey  columns  surged  northward  to  Gettysburg,  and 
even  when  much  later  still,  Grant's  army  recoiled 
in  utter  paralysis  from  the  futile  assaults  on  Lee  in 
the  Wilderness. 

Still,  this  is  not  an  attack  on  Lincoln,  nor  do  I 
seek  to  revive  sectionalism,  further  than  consistency 
and  self-respect  demand.  I  am  well  aware  that 
patriotism  is  a  matter  of  geography.  That  all  depends 
upon  which  side  of  the  line  you  were  born.  But  so 
also  is  renegadeism.  High  moral  law  demands  that 
we  be  true  to  our  fellows,  our  surroundings.  The 
Washingtons  and  Lees  obeyed  it.  The  Arnolds  and 
Iscariots  defied  it.  This  is  simply  an  earnest  protest 
against  accepting  as  a  Southern  hero,  a  Southern 
exemplar,  a  man  no  matter  how  personally  worthy, 
who  was  a  leader  of  Northernism,  and  of  Northernism 
in  its  attitude  of  implacable  hostility  to  the  South 
and  Southern  ideals.  It  is  natural  that  the  Negro 
should  honor  Lincoln.  He  gave  the  Negro  freedom. 
And  the  North;  he  gave  the  North  dominion  over  the 
South.  He  carried  out  Northern  ideals  of  centralism, 
imperalism.  The  Southern  ideal,  State  rights,  home 
rule,  the  palladium  the  world  over  of  the  weak,  met 
destruction  at  his  hands.  With  glaring  inconsist- 
ency, we  still  hold  the  ideals  to  be  true,  while  paying 
homage  to  the  chief  instrument  of  their  destruction. 

"Suppose  the  South  had  won."  What  then?  Is 
the  common  query,  usually  in  tones  of  utter  depreca- 
tion. I  would  reply  that  the  South  lost,  what  then? 
The  blackest  page  in  the  annals  of  our  race!  Would 
the  Lees,  the  Davises,  the  Hamptons,  the  Vances, 
the  Grahams,  the  Ashes,  the  Grimes,  the  Clarks, 
the  Ransoms,  the  Averys,  been  less  fit  to  deal  with 
even  the  tremendous  issues  left  by  the  war,  than  the  ( 
Sewards,  the  Wades,  the  Stevenses,  the  Holdens,  the 
Tourgees,  the  Deweeses,  the  Cuflfees,  who  fumbled 
them  till  with  an  effort  that  paralyzed  all  other 
endeavors  for  a  generation,  we  wrenched  the  helm  » 
from  their  hand. 

The  War  of  1861,  nothwithstanding  the  unfortunate 
slavery  complication,  was  as  much  a  war  of  liberty  as 
that  of  1775,  or  that  in  the  Mother  country  of  1642. 
It  was  a  struggle  for  local  self-government  against 
centralism,  and  of  all  the  evils  that  have  skulked  in 
its  shadows,  monoply,  trusts,  extortion  in  its  protean 
guises.  A  quicker  exploitation  of  our  resources — and 
a  quicker  destruction — has  undoubtedly  ensued.  But 
where  has  the  wealth  gone?    Would  not  the  product 

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of  these  resources  be  safer  in  the  hands  of  nature  than 
in  the  hands  that  now  hold  them?  Local  self  govern- 
ment, the  ideal  of  which  the  flower  of  our  manhood 
laid  down  their  lives,  was  the  instinctive  effort  of 
our  branch  of  the  race  to  avert  these  evils,  and 
many  others,  some  unforseen  then,  some  even  now 
only  dimly  emerging  from  the  haze  of  the  time  to 
come. 

Then  the  South  was  the  citadel  of  conservatism. 
■  What  a  brake  upon  the  wild  wheels  of  the  world  her 
splendid  conservatism  would  have  been,  could  it 
only  have  won  the  prestige  of  success.  In  all  human 
probability,  it  would  have  saved  us  from  the  maze 
of  fads,  follies  and  isms  through  which  we  now  grope 
in  utter  bewilderment,  and  from  which  only  some 
drastic  remedy — war  or  worse — can  ever  rescue  us. 

But  it  does  seem  that  Southern  writers  have  to 
stultify  themselves  every  time  they  approach  the 
subject  as  to  what  might  have  been  if  the  victory  had 
been  accorded  to  us  instead  of  our  foes. 

Loud  in  praise  of  the  statesmenship  of  the  old 
South;  strong  in  the  belief  of  the  justice  of  her  cause; 
yet  no  sooner  do  they  reach  the  point  where  the 
stronger  battalions  of  the  North  prevail,  than  they 
drop  on  their  knees  and  thank  Heaven  for  having 
si.vved  the  South  from  herself.  They  thank  Providence 
that  instead  of  giving  the  South  a  respite  from 
Northern  incendiarism,  instead  of  smoothing  her 
way  so  that  she  might  put  by  slavery  in  the  least 
harmful  manner,  brought  down  upon  her  three  million 
of  armed  men,  who  destroying  the  flower  of  her 
manhood,  breaking  the  heart  of  her  womanhood, 
consigning  her  children  to  poverty  and  ignorance, 
reducing  her  people  to  virtual  beggars,  would  have 
forced  miscegenation,  mongrelism,  upon  her,  but 
for  the  mettle  of  her  stock.  Others  may  think  as 
they  will,  but  I  can  not  bring  myself  to  hold  any  such 
slanderous  opinions  of  Providence.  I  can  not  see 
the  hands  of  Providence  (though  I  might  a  sootier 
one),  in  such  fell  work  as  on  the  one  hands  suffering 
Northern  abolition  incendiarism,  to  arouse  and 
inflame  the  resentment  of  the  South,  and  on  the  other 
hand  Northern  ingenuity  to  invent  the  cotton  gin, 
and  thus  at  the  critical  moment,  infinitely  increasing 
the  value  of  slaves,  forstall  the  South  in  her  earnest 
endeavors  to  put  an  end  to  slavery.  That  the  South 
vras  denied  the  inestimable  privilege  of  abolishing 
this  curse  which  the  cruel  hand  of  fate  had  fastened 

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upon  her.  thus  saving  herself  the  unspeakable  loss  and 
woe  and  humuliation  that  the  war  entailed,  is  no  proof 
that  the  Southern  way  was  the  wrong  way.    Success 
is  no  proof  of  right,  nor  failure  of  wrong.    Yet  men 
whose  very  religion  is  founded  on  one,  who  from  the 
low    standpoint    of    material    things,    sounded    the 
abysmal  depths  of  failure,  now  cry  aloud  that  it  is 
The  Vessel  of  iron  will  ever  smash  the  one  of  gold, 
against  which  in  the  rough  mischances  of  the  world 
it  is  thrown,  though  the  latter  from  the  fineness  c    V  ■ 
material  and  the  nobleness  of  its  design  might  I 
to  edify  mankind  forever. 

0.    W.    BLACKNAL- 
Kittrell,  N.  C. 

January,  1915. 


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